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Barbra Leslie wrote what she knows: a crack cocaine addiction

Toronto writer Barbra Leslie has written a book called Cracked, drawing on her experiences on Bay Street and with addiction and crack use. (Richard Lautens / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Mike DohertySpecial to the Star

Tues., Nov. 24, 2015

Barbra Leslie received some baffling rejections from publishers for her thriller, Cracked.

One editor insisted she must be a man cloaked by a pseudonym, because “no woman would ever write this level of violence.” Another claimed her protagonist, Danielle “Danny” Cleary, was “a completely unrealistic portrayal of a crack addict.” Leslie shakes her head. “I was like, ‘Trust me.’”

Leslie had written the first draft of Cracked while she was going cold turkey from crack cocaine in late 2008, at her mother’s house in rural Nova Scotia. Formerly a marketing manager at Bay Street law firms, Leslie spent nearly three years and upwards of $200,000 on the drug.

She used to think that when the money ran out, she would simply kill herself — “I couldn’t imagine living without it,” she says. Instead, she suffered through the withdrawal and resurrected an on-again, off-again writing career she had worked at since she was a teenager.

Cracked, published this month by Titan Books, is not only a breathless, propulsive read, but also a cautionary tale.

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“My life is a cautionary tale,” laughs Leslie, who is 48 but looks younger. Over drinks at a financial district bar, she’s vivacious, open and more than a little nervous about sharing the darkest aspects of her past with the world. “The dichotomy between before and during (the addiction) was unbelievable.”

Leslie was once a straight-A high school student who published poems and short stories and never touched drugs; she got a degree in Victorian literature from the University of Toronto and her first novel, Nerve, came out in 1998.

She went on to option two manuscripts as screenplays, worked high-powered jobs and married a successful hedge fund manager. But when her marriage ended in 2005 she became depressed and started doing cocaine recreationally with a new set of friends. A boyfriend introduced her to crack and the hook was instantaneous.

The scene at the beginning of Cracked, where Danny is holed up in her Toronto pad with a friend, ordering drugs, resembles Leslie’s life by 2006, she says. She hardly fit the stereotype of a crack user. She recalls when a dealer brought two “mostly toothless” prostitutes to the dark midtown apartment she called “the Batcave”: “These girls were amazed that I wasn’t going out and doing a blow job to get a $20 piece.”

Danny Cleary is an action hero: trained in boxing and martial arts, she embarks on a mission of vengeance across Canada and the U.S., hunting the people who she believes killed her twin sister. But she resembles her creator, too. They share a sardonic sense of humour and the feeling that a hit of crack, as Danny reflects, is “like a choir of angels all of a sudden bursting into the room and whispering into your ears.”

Leslie recalls surrendering completely to the drug and losing touch with her family and friends. Once, fearing a heart attack after a five-day bender, she checked herself into detox. It didn’t stop her from using, but a counsellor’s warning stayed with her: “Crack is the only drug that’ll steal your soul.”

In Cracked, Danny is literally able to fight past her addiction when her family needs her. Leslie herself quit when her aging mother broke her leg and required her help. She read her mother’s collection of mystery novels and then began to work through her issues in a genre she found cathartic.

The character of Danny, she says, is “Wonder Woman to my Diana Prince . . . The first time I wrote a violent scene, I had tears streaming down my face. When I read it, still, I get emotional.”

Cracked is part of a planned trilogy; the second book, Rehab Run, will be set in Nova Scotia, as Danny attempts to kick the habit. Leslie herself has overcome relapses; she says she has been clean for six years. Now on the other side of the law, she works part-time as a reporter for the Ontario Superior Court, where she’s constantly reminded of her past.

“When an accused is sitting really close to me,” she says, one of “the ones who have been caught with a couple of grams, sometimes I want to give them a hug.”

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